AWS backs Open VSX as Rust survey shows VS Code decline
- Reference: 1772546708
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/03/03/open_vsx_aws/
- Source link:
Open VSX is operated by the Eclipse Foundation, and provides extensions unencumbered by the restriction Microsoft places on the VS Code marketplace [1]that "alternative products including those built on a fork of the Code-OSS Repository, are not permitted to access the Visual Studio Marketplace." Microsoft cites security and compatibility as reasons, and there is no business case to "run a full-scale global service for everyone to use," in the [2]words of Chris Dias, who was head of product for VS Code at the time.
The Open VSX project was started by GitPod (now Ona) in early 2020 as a vendor-neutral registry for use by Code-OSS forks, including VSCodium and Theia. The number of such forks has increased as AI usage has grown, and now includes Google Antigravity, Cursor, Windsurf, and AWS Kiro. The problem with Open VSX is that it has many fewer extensions than the VS Code marketplace, though the more popular choices are likely to be present other than those from Microsoft itself.
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In early 2023, Eclipse community manager John Kellerman appealed for funding, stating that "we will be forced to decommission the Open VSX registry by the end of May." Funding was forthcoming in the shape of a [4]new working group formed from interested companies, and today the registry appears to be on a firm footing, with over 300 million monthly downloads and new sponsorship from AWS and Cursor.
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Last week, the project described [7]plans to transition to a hybrid infrastructure with a primary AWS deployment in Europe and a secondary on-premises environment in Canada. There will be a dedicated fallback storage cluster.
There is also work in progress on a new [8]verification framework , which will attempt to block malicious and/or impersonated extensions.
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Perhaps less welcome is that Open VSX is no longer free for all users. In January, the project introduced [10]usage tiers , with subscriptions required for organizations generating more than 75 requests per second.
[11]Generic methods arrive in Golang, but they weren't the top dev demand
[12]Rapid AI-driven development makes security unattainable, warns Veracode
[13]Cloudflare experiment ports most of Next.js API 'in one week' with AI
[14]Go library maintainer brands GitHub's Dependabot a 'noise machine'
Microsoft's VS Code has long been the most popular IDE (integrated development environment), thanks to being free to use, cross-platform, and with hundreds of thousands of extensions – 93,862 at the time of writing. New feature releases appear every month. Last year's [15]Stack Overflow survey put VS Code usage at 76.2 percent of professional developers, more than double the 29.7 percent for second-place Visual Studio.
Although that dominance is unlikely to end soon, there are signs that it may have peaked. The AI wave has stimulated competition, and companies such as OpenAI [16]argue that traditional IDEs are sub-optimal for agent-driven development.
Microsoft has stuffed endless AI features into VS Code, but the drive to keep up has also alienated developers who find those features intrusive or distracting.
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A new survey of Rust developers shows VS Code usage declining, with some devs switching to Zed
The results of the 2025 State of Rust survey have been [18]published , showing that in this particular community VS Code usage has declined from 61.7 percent to 51.6 percent in three years. The Rust-powered Zed has grown from almost nothing to 18.6 percent usage now, while the dedicated Rust Rover IDE from JetBrains has seen a slight decline, from 16.4 percent to 14.4 percent. ®
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_is-vs-code-free
[2] https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/31168#issuecomment-2810912914
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aacTtqxbUv_Prdd_0PSKTgAAA8o&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.devclass.com/development/2023/06/27/open-vsx-alternative-to-vs-code-marketplace-saved-from-closure-by-new-eclipse-working-group/1625540
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aacTtqxbUv_Prdd_0PSKTgAAA8o&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aacTtqxbUv_Prdd_0PSKTgAAA8o&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/denis-roy/hardening-open-vsx-registry-keeping-it-reliable-scale
[8] https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/christopher-guindon/strengthening-supply-chain-security-open-vsx
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aacTtqxbUv_Prdd_0PSKTgAAA8o&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://github.com/EclipseFdn/open-vsx.org/wiki/rate-limiting
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/02/generic_methods_go/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/26/veracode_security_ai/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/25/cloudflare_nextjs_api_ai/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/24/github_dependabot_noise_machine/
[15] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology#most-popular-technologies-dev-envs-dev-envs-prof
[16] https://www.devclass.com/development/2026/02/05/traditional-ides-not-the-right-tool-for-development-with-agentic-ai-openai-claims/4090132
[17] https://regmedia.co.uk/2026/03/03/rust-survey.jpg
[18] https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/02/2025-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results/
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I am transitioning VSCode to Zed, but if intrusive AI is the reason you are stepping away from VSCode then maybe Zed is not a direction you would go in.
Well yes, but also no
Given that you are actually able to disable AI involvement with a simple switch should be something of a benefit.
Puts the AI integration into the hands of the user.
I have no issue with "features" provided they can be simple turned off (ideally off as standard would be more preferable)
Re: Well yes, but also no
I've been using AI for a little over 2 years for comments and tests and what AI generates isn't satisfactory. I rewrite 90% of them because they're exclusively (>= 98%) in 1 of 3 categories:
1. completely pointless, ie. 4 = 4 - 1 + 1
2. too vague, ie. "receives three unsigned integers and a double"
3. extremely misleading to the context, ie. "returns an integer" ... actually returning 8 bools in 1 byte
As for tests, I'm not a "professional" programmer but I feel for non-pros (or lazy types) that AI generated tests are better than nothing. If they're not great they'll pass anything which is essentially the same as not having tests. If they don't pass, then you partially rewrite them and make them partially legitimate or at least better than what AI came up with.
Re: Well yes, but also no
Tests which claim to test something but which actually don't are far worse than non-existent tests. They give everybody involved an artificial sense of security, discourage other more diligent developers from building tests, and and prevent you from using tools like code coverage to determine which areas are weak.
Worst of all of course are tests which wrongly pass is that they are effectively making incorrect claims about what the code *should* be doing, and there's a danger that the code will never be fixed because future developers conclude from the tests that the behaviour is correct.
Re: Well yes, but also no
It's pretty straight forward with Zed; just put the following in the settings.json file:
{
"disable_ai": true
}
Gram
Well (having just read about it for the first time today) apparently if you want Zed without AI there's now a fork called Gram that will give you exactly that.
"hundreds of thousands of extensions – 93,862 at the time of writing" - interesting definition of hundreds of thousands. Not sure 93,862 quite counts as a single hundred thousand . . . .